Company must spend $295,000 on education program

Winfield Industrial Sales required to develop program on fall protection, safeguards

Winfield Industrial Sales, based in Hinton, Alta., has been ordered to pay $295,000 for an Alberta Forest Products Association educational program and fined $5,000 due to a workplace fatality. Winfield must develop and make available an educational program concerning fall protection, energy isolation and safeguards against harm.

On Nov. 23, 2015, a worker was installing guardrails on top of a bleaching tower and became entangled with the coupling on the gear drive. The worker was pulled into the machine and subsequently died due to injuries.

The company pleaded guilty to section 139(1)(b) of Alberta’s OHS Code, failure to ensure that workers used a fall protection system at a temporary work area where a worker could fall a vertical distance of less than 3 metres if there was an unusual possibility of injury.

This write-up originally appeared in the April/May 2019 issue of COS.